Cara Silva, MA, LMFT 91325 is a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist with 20 years of professional experience working with behavioral health, specializing in Trauma and Substance Use Disorders. Cara dreamed of becoming a criminal psychologist for the FBI. At a young age, Cara was eager to make her dreams come true and interviewed at the FBI headquarters in SD. Unfortunately, without three years of professional experience under my belt, they told me to come back when I did.

Well, life didn’t go as planned and 10 years later, Cara was married and raising two toddlers. One day she decided to go after her dreams, again. Cara received her bachelor’s degree in Psychology from San Diego State University in 2000. Now, married with two kids, Cara attended National University, where she continued her journey and received her master’s degree in Counseling Psychology with an emphasis in Marriage and Family Therapy.

Cara has worked at Alvarado Parkway Institute (API), an acute inpatient psychiatric facility, providing crisis intervention, SI/SH/HI assessments, and group therapy with clients suffering from chronic, drug induced and acute mental illness. Her experience continued to grow, deepening her understanding for the disease of addiction, while working with women in recovery at an intensive outpatient drug treatment facility, VistaHill ParentCare Central. Cara facilitated individual and group counseling for three years before promoting to Intervention Prevention Therapist working directly with the children and their mothers on reunification, parenting, and life skills.

Two years later, Cara was given an amazing opportunity to grow exponentially as the Program Director and Clinical Supervisor for a non-profit organization dedicated to providing long term therapy to children of trauma due to domestic violence and child abuse. She ran weekly group and individual supervision for students and associates seeking hours towards licensure. With Cara’s hard work and dedication, SD Center for Counseling started to grow substantially and no longer owed any debt. SDCC was finally operating in the black after years of red.  The board of directors voted Cara to Vice President of SDCC. Cara quickly started to learn all about the makings of an organization, where she helped create programs, research grants, and prepare budgets.

It was this experience that drove her to continue her journey and where Silva Family Therapy, Inc. was created.  The many years she gained experience working with trauma, addiction, domestic violence/abuse, and PTSD, Cara believes that we all live in cycles and sometimes we get stuck in those cycles. Maybe it’s the cycle of addiction, the cycle of abuse, power and control, or the cycle of life and maybe you’re feeling stuck. Stuck because you can’t get out of the cycle. Cara’s passion is about empowering others. Showing them their infinite power and choices in life. Helping them to recognize their cycle and empowering them to finally break the cycle.  Cara is EMDR trained and uses a variety of evidence-based approaches to help clients work through depression, anxiety, trauma, and other mood disorders. 

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